Confronted

‎The Lord knows very well that you cannot change your own heart and cannot cleanse your own nature, but He also knows that He can do both. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Be ready for the violence of grace. It will do what it needs to do to rescue you from the one thing you cannot escape; YOU. ~ Paul Tripp

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

(Romans 7:18-23 ESV)

Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

(2 Corinthians 3:12-18 ESV)

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth...For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

(John 1:12-14, 16-17 ESV)

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

(2 Corinthians 4:16-18 ESV)

Finally! The long awaited book review on...

the Cross of Christ by John Stott!

The sad part is that I did not complete the last 1/4 of the book. I may shake my fists at the public library for not allowing renews on inter-library loans, but the fault only lies with me. I didn't keep up with the strict reading schedule that I had come up for myself. I must submit to the consequences. No, I did not finish this incredible book. *insert-tear-stricken-face-here* Nevertheless, one doesn't need to read many chapters of this book to realize what a gem it truly is!

I have read and heard many great reviews on this particular work by Stott over the years and it has taken me awhile to actual pursue reading it. After all, it is a thick book. And it's definite classified as a theological work. Theology and I don't always mix, but Gospel theology is quite a different area. This book was engaging on so many levels; I hardly think I will cover but a few of the many sections that stood out to me. If you're not passionate about the Gospel, get some of this good news in your system! I think it has been said that this book was Stott's magnum opus and it is very clear why. Stott was known for his brilliance and keen intellect as a preacher, entrepreneur, and writer, but I have read so many moving articles (since his death this past July) on his character, faith, and devotion to Christ and the Lord's people. It was clear that he lived the Gospel of which he had deeply studied for so long.

His great esteem for the centrality of the Cross and the authority of Scripture is striking as you begin to read the beginning chapters. In fact, his very first chapter is titled, The Centrality of the Cross, and begins by giving his readers a historical and Biblical account of the cross as a the symbol for Christianity. I have a love for Biblical/Church history, so Stott immediately drew me in!

Despite the great important of his teaching, his example, and his works of compassion and power, none of these was central to his mission. What dominated his mind was not the living by the giving of his life. This final self-sacrifice was his ‘hour’, for which he had come into the world. (pg 32, Stott)

One of things I really enjoyed about Stott's writing is the way that he takes you point by point through the Cross and all the details that entail such a divine work of God. I think we become too accustomed to the simplicity of the Gospel, that we forget the depth and the meaning behind it. We forget the seriousness of sin, the majesty of God in the light of who we are apart from Christ, why Christ had to die, by whose hands did he really die, the problem of forgiveness, why God needed satisfaction before he was prepared to forgive, why there needed to be a substitute before there could be propitiation, redemption, justification, or reconciliation, and what exactly the Cross achieved for us in its fullness.
Beginning his chapter on the self-substitution of God, he writes, "We have located the problem of forgiveness in the gravity of sin and the majesty of God, that is, in the realities of who we are and who he is. How can the holy love of God come to terms with the unholy lovelessness of man? What would happen if they were to come into collision with each other? The problem is not outside God; it is within his own being. Because God never contradicts himself, he must be himself and ‘satisfy’ himself, acting in absolute consistency with the perfection of his character. ‘It is the recognition of this divine necessity, or the failure to recognize it,’ wrote James Denny, ‘which ultimately divides interpreters of Christian into evangelical and non-evangelical, those who are true to the New Testament and those who cannot digest it.’

Moreover, as we have seen, this inward necessity does not mean that God must be true to only a part of himself (whether his law or honour or justice), nor that he must express one of his attributes (whether love or holiness) at the expense of another, but rather that he must be completely and invariably himself in the fullness of his moral being. T.J. Crawford stressed this point: ‘it is altogether an error…to suppose that God acts at one time according to one of his attributes, and at another time according to another. He acts in conformity with all of them at all times…As for the divine justice and the divine mercy in particular, the end of his work was not to bring them into harmony, as if they had been at variance with one another, but jointly to manifest and glorify them in the redemption of sinners. It is a case of combined action, and not of counteraction, on the part of these attributes, that is exhibited at the cross.’

In a generation that picks and chooses what aspects of God are best to focus on and tends toward separating the 'God of the Old Testament' and the 'God of the New Testament' (as if they're NOT the same, unchangeable LORD?!), I'm always on the lookout for men of authority in the Body to speak of the attributes of God as one whole. The Body needs to hear about the true God who is both the Lion and the Lamb. God's characteristics must be woven together and that is what makes Him truly glorious! By this, we know that "He was unwilling to act in love at the expense of his holiness or in holiness at the expense of his love. So we may say that he satisfied his holy love by himself dying the death and so bearing the judgment which sinners deserved. He both exacted and accepted the penalty of human sin. And he did it ‘so as to be just and the one who justified the man who has faith in Jesus’ (Rom 3:26)." (Stott)

Stott continues to knit together this beautiful, humbling reality throughout his book.

"It cannot be emphasized too strongly that God’s love is the source, not the consequence, of the atonement. As P.T. Forsyth expressed it, ‘the atonement did not procure grace, it flowed from grace.’ God does not love us because Christ died for us; Christ died for us because God loved us. If it is God’s wrath which needed to be propitiated, it is God’s love which did the propitiating. If it may be said that the propitiation ‘changed’ God, or that by it he changed himself, let us be clear he did not change from wrath to love, or from enmity to grace, since his character is unchanging. What the propitiation changed was his dealings with us. ‘The distinction I asked you to observe,’ wrote P.T. Forsyth, ‘is between a change of feeling and a change of treatment…God’s feeling toward us never needed to be changed. But God’s treatment of us, God’s practical relation to us – that had to change.’ He forgave us and welcomed us home."

There's so many facets to the Gospel that we truly need to know, protect, and cherish in accordance with Scripture. This brings me to yet another aspect of Stott's writing that I very much appreciated. In each chapter, as he is dissecting through each part of the work of the Cross, Stott presents various arguments and viewpoints that have developed over the centuries, from the early Greek and Latin church fathers to modern theologians and contemporaries. This was very intriguing to me because it reveals how easily man is led astray to create warped viewpoints that, though based partially in truths, have not stayed in line with Scripture. In one of the chapters, he walks you through various concepts and arguments that theologians and early church fathers have understood the obstacles to forgiveness which need first to be removed. He concludes the chapter with an argument against those viewpoints using Scripture to speak for itself. I found this helpful and informative because I did not realize how many ways one could warp the message of the Cross!

We strongly reject, therefore, every explanation of the death of Christ which does not have at its centre the principle of ‘satisfaction through substitution’, indeed divine self-satisfaction through divine self-substitution. The cross was not a commercial bargain with the devil, let alone one which tricked and trapped him; nor an exact equivalent, a quid pro quo to satisfy a code of honour or technical point of law; nor a compulsory submission of God to some moral authority above him from which he could not otherwise escape; nor a punishment of a meek Christ by a harsh and punitive Father; nor a procurement of salvation by a loving Christ from a mean and reluctant Father; for an action of the Father which bypassed Christ as Mediator. Instead, the righteous, loving Father humbled himself to become in and through his only Son flesh, sin and a curse for us, in order to redeem us without compromising his own character. The theological words ‘satisfaction’ and ‘substitution’ need to be carefully defined and safeguarded, but they cannot in any circumstances be given up. The biblical Gospel of atonement is of God satisfying himself by substituting himself for us.
The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone. (Stott)

Sometimes, his statements pack a bullet to the heart. He writes the truth with such clarity and yet he is always pointing readers to the abundant goodness of God.


For there is nothing capricious or arbitrary about the holy God. Nor is he ever irascible, malicious, spiteful or vindictive. His anger is neither mysterious nor irrational. It is never unpredictable, but always predictable, because it is provoked by evil and by evil alone. The wrath of God…is his steady, unrelenting, unremitting, uncompromising antagonism to evil in all its forms and manifestations. In short, God’s anger is poles apart for ours. What provokes our anger (injured vanity) never provokes his; what provokes his anger (evil) seldom provokes ours.
There is no possibility of persuading, cajoling or bribing God to forgive us, for we deserve nothing at his hands but judgment. Nor, as we have seen, has Christ by his sacrifice prevailed upon God to pardon us. No, the initiative has been taken by God himself in his sheer mercy and grace. (Stott)

He allows the work of the cross to speak for itself and to do what it is meant to do....strip and humble us before the greatness of the Father's love.

The cross enforces three truths – about ourselves, about God and about Jesus Christ.
First, our sin must be extremely horrible. Nothing reveals the gravity of sin like the cross. For ultimately what sent Christ there was neither the greed of Judas, not the envy of the priests, nor the vacillating cowardice of Pilate, but our own greed, envy, cowardice and other sins, and Christ’s resolve in love and mercy to bear their judgment and so put them away. It is impossible for us to face Christ’s cross with integrity and not to feel ashamed of ourselves. Apathy, selfishness and complacency blossom everywhere in the world except at the cross. There these noxious weed shrivel and die. They are seen for the tatty, poisonous things they are. For if there was no way by which the righteous God could righteously forgive our unrighteousness, except that he should bear it himself in Christ, it must be serious indeed. It is only when we see this that, stripped of our self-righteousness and self-satisfaction, we are ready to put our trust in Jesus Christ as the Saviour we urgently need.
Secondly, God’s love must be wonderful beyond comprehension. God could quite justly have abandoned us to our fate. He could have left us alone to reap the fruit of our wrongdoing and to perish in our sins. It is what we deserved. But he did not. Because he loved us, he came after us in Christ. He pursued us even to the desolate anguish of the cross, where he bore our sin, guilt, judgment and death. It takes a hard and stony heart to remain unmoved by love like that. It is more than love. Its proper name is ‘grace,’ which is love to the undeserving.
Thirdly, Christ’s salvation must be a free gift. He ‘purchased’ it for us at the high price of his own life-blood. So what is there left for us to pay? Nothing! Since he claimed that all was now ‘finished’, there is nothing for us to contribute. Not of course that we now have a license to sin and can always count on God’s forgiveness. On the contrary, the same cross of Christ, which is the ground of free salvation, is also the most powerful incentive to a holy life. But this new life follows. First, we have to humble ourselves at the foot of the cross, confess that we have sinned and deserve nothing at his hand but judgment, thank him that he loved us and died for us, and receive from him a full and free forgiveness. Against this self-humbling our ingrained pride rebels. We resent the idea that we cannot ear – or even contribute to – our own salvation. So, we stumble, as Paul put it, over the stumbling-block of the cross.

Instead of inflicting upon us the judgment we deserved, God in Christ endured it in our place. Hell is the only alternative. This is the ‘scandal’, the stumbling block, of the cross. For our proud hearts rebel against it. We cannot bear to acknowledge either the seriousness of our sin and guilt or out utter indebtedness to the cross.
The proud human heart is there revealed. We insist on paying for what we have done. We cannot stand the humiliation of acknowledging our bankruptcy and allowing somebody else to pay for us. That notion that this somebody else should be God himself is just too much to take. We would rather perish than repent, rather lose ourselves than humble ourselves.
But we cannot escape the embarrassment of standing stark naked before God. It is no use our trying to cover up like Adam and Eve in the garden. Our attempts at self-justification are as ineffectual as their fig-leaves. We have to acknowledge our nakedness, see the divine substitute wearing our filthy rags instead of us, and allow him to clothe us with his own righteousness. (Stott)

Everything in me seeks to rise up with one big YES and say "There's the glory of the Gospel!" This is the message that is worth preserving with our lives!

I could continue quoting his work, but that would quickly become a disaster zone. I love quoting! However, in conclusion, I must say that this book is a perfect study companion with Scripture. Although Stott can get a little tedious at times with Greek translations while making his arguments, I didn't find this book hard to sift through at all. While it can be a lot to digest in one sitting (the chapters are quite long), it is never dull or dry for one moment. During each pause from reading, I found it a great source of truths to reflect on and very encouraging in relation to my prayers and time spent with Jesus everyday. Having Scripture and bold truths strongly and daily reaffirmed to you can do wonders for your soul! I'm so thankful to God for men like John Stott in our history that have fought the good fight of faith to preserve the Word and extend grace to all who hear. Now, I really need to buy this book so that I can finish the last few chapters...haha!

If the book of life is said in Rev 13:8 to belong to “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world’, then John is telling us nothing less than that from an eternity of the past to an eternity of the future the center stage is occupied by the Lamb of God who was slain. ~ John Stott

If the Cross of Christ is anything to the mind, it is surely everything - the most profound reality and the sublimest mystery. One comes to realize that literally all the wealth and glory of the gospel centers here. The Cross is the pivot as well as the center of New Testament thought. It is the exclusive mark of the Christian faith, the symbol of Christianity and its cynosure.

The more unbelievers deny its crucial character, the more do believers find in it the key to the mysteries of sin and suffering. We rediscover the apostolic emphasis on the Cross when we read the gospel with Muslims. We find that, although the offence of the Cross remains, its magnetic power is irresistible. ~ Samuel Zwemer, American missionary who labored in Arabia.

Grace ~ Charis

It is a fight to find your joy in Christ alone every day. In some seasons, it feels vastly more difficult than in others, as I have been recently learning. For another "Gospel goodness" post, I thought it would be appropriate to cover Grace.

In most modern church circles, grace has simply come to be defined as an unlimited acceptance of sin without conviction or sanctification. But this comes as no surprise when the church is allowing worldly influences to seep in, rather than making an impact and influence on the world! When the world seeps into the church, one starts to see an increasingly widespread tolerance of sin. It always starts in the "small" things that are subtle and hard to notice. But for those who are in the Word and abiding in the Vine, it is fairly easy to spot. So, as the definition of grace begins to truncate, the danger of sin starts to diminish in our eyes.

Oh how the eyes of man must be opened to take in a fuller view of God's divine grace! To really begin to see and savor His grace should lead us to a deeper abhorrence of sin and its dangers as we see how much sweeter and more fulfilling Christ is!

Here is a definition from the Blueletterbible.org concordance that I really adore!

Grace - good will, loving-kindness, favour - of the merciful kindness by which God, exerting his holy influence upon souls, turns them to Christ, keeps, strengthens, increases them in Christian faith, knowledge, affection, and kindles them to the exercise of the Christian virtues.

Grace has two parts. It's unmerited favor and it's a holy enabling. I love that these two things are not separated! It's so utterly crucial to our Christian walk that we begin to grasp the depth of God's grace. Here's why...

1. If Grace was merely unmerited favor, we would rest happy and sluggish in our sins knowing that we are saved for eternity in Christ, but are free to sin as we please because we can always fall back on His grace. This mindset has led many to a spirit of complacency in regards to their sin, feeling that it is futile to strive to be better than what they are since they will "always be this way" or thinking, "Christ really doesn't expect me to live holy {in regards to every area of life} because that's an impossible standard that can never be achieved." This mindset leaves one wallowing in their messes. For such a person, they are content in living in the "desert" as the "Promise Land" seems a bit too idealistic to one living in a fallen world.

2. If Grace was merely a holy enabling and strengthening, we would become quite prideful, religious, and perfectionist in our mentality. For some, this mindset might lead them to continually be on a self-made "spiritual" high. For others, it might lead them to be judgmental and unloving towards others who aren't overcoming their sins "quick enough." It leads one to expect how much of the "higher standard" that they'll be able to grasp in this life, instead of leaning on the Spirit to do the work according to the Lord's perfect timing. This mindset is all about the power and strength that the Christian has in Christ and seems to ignore the humbling reality that Christ often works to make us extremely helpless and weak in many areas of our life (for however long a season He appoints) so that we won't lean on Him just for "power" and "strength" (i.e. what we can get from Him) but rather just to lean on Him for Him alone even when we don't get those things immediately. For such a person, they presume to know how much of the "Promise Land" they'll receive and get to explore in their lifetime.

For those who trifle with sin, perhaps a warning should be heeded:

For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. ~ Jude 1:4

Treating grace as a ticket to "do what you want" is a denying of the LORDSHIP of Christ over your life. Don't do it. Flee such a temptation.

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

Rom 6:12-18

For those who presume to be above their sins, as if they've obtained a certain level of "perfection" or "holiness", perhaps a reminder is needed:

So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

~ 2 Cor 12:7-10

There is always debate and disagreement over what Paul's thorn truly was, but I don't think the focus on the thorn is the main point. And some may ask, "why did God allow a messenger of Satan to harass Paul and why would He never take this away from him?" Again, I don't think that is the point. God is saying His grace is sufficient, ALWAYS. For days or for years, we may never "feel" or "see" the relief of a struggle with a particular sin or issue, though we continue to press on after Him through all the difficulty. For days or years, we may never truly know what it means to be empowered by God in a dramatic, life-changing way. Perhaps, our season of weakness lasts much longer than we wanted or predicted it would. Perhaps, we never truly feel like we're living a victorious Christian life even though we pray, read and study the Word, fellowship, and strive to remain in the Vine. But that doesn't nullify His grace. His empowering grace isn't always as we perceive it should or might be. His grace is sufficient when we're going through a long and hard battle because He keeps us through it all. He doesn't let us go, no matter what we think or feel. It's not based on our emotions or thoughts. He children still remain His children. A Christian will always, no matter how dark of a season they travel through, come out of it still trusting and loving Christ. This may look different for many people, but this is God's loving purpose for us through hard times.

The Spirit of God works mysteriously in our lives. We cannot presume that we "control" it now that we are in Christ. Our dear Father in heaven looks down upon us with His smiling face. He has holy, wise, and good purposes for everything in our lives. It's a temptation to think ill of Him when He withholds something from our lives for a certain struggle or hard circumstance. It's hard to find joy in Him and to love Him when He seems to be silent. May we increasingly find comfort in this verse:

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. ~ Heb 4:16

When He withholds, He withholds lovingly. He says, "I love you so much. I know to the depths just how difficult this is for you. But I know what you truly need, even though it is not what you want. Trust Me in My decision concerning this. Is not My love and favor of you enough through the winds and the trials? Hold fast to me, My dear one. Please keep your eyes only on Me and, I promise, I'll carry you through. Don't look to anyone or anything else, no matter how wise or right it may seem. For now, all you need is Me. Am I not enough for you?"

Grace is not an empowering feeling. Sometimes, He call us to walk and obey in something even when we feel completely weak and unable to do it. Sometimes, the strength and enabling (whether that be actual physical strength, or joy, or love, or a willing heart, etc) doesn't come until after we start walking.

For those who seem complacent in their sins and never moving forward in their walk with Christ, we're called to bear with them. To bear long. And when we think they should have overcome already, or when we think we just cannot bear to hold them up any longer, we go to the His throne room of grace, again and again. And again. We are never to tolerate their sins in the way of encouraging or acting flippant of its dangers. No, we love them with truth and honesty, but also with tears and much service. To those willfully stubborn and unrepentant in their sins, we must learn to turn away. As Paul ordered to the Corinthian church to do for the man who was unrepentant in his sexual immorality, we are to deliver {them} to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that {their} spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord (1 Cor 5:5). And, we are to continue interceding for them, that they may come to a place of utter brokenness to find Life. In all these, He gives abundant grace so that we may learn to continue in prayer and well-doing, steadfast and sincere.

There are so many avenues in life where we come to learn what grace means and how it is applied. When it is woven correctly in the cords of who Christ is (Love, Holiness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Kindness, Righteousness), it is there that we will find freedom and change taking root.

We are great sinners, favored and loved by a great God, even in our most awful of states, pressing ever harder and striving ever further to obtain the fullness of Christ. I close with two of my favorite grace verses, praise God!

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. ~ Titus 2:11-14

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. ~ 1 Cor 15:10

Gospel Goodness

Reflecting on the Gospel this lazy Sunday afternoon...

What was the precious blood of Christ for?

~ for atonement (Romans 5:11) i.e. making restoration.

~ for propitiation - and just and satisfying offering in our stead (Romans 3:25).

~ for our justification from sin (Romans 5:9).

~ for the forgiveness of sins (Eph 1:7, Col 1:14, Heb 9:7).

~ for the remission of sins (Matt 26:28, Rom 3:25, Heb 9:22).

~ for the cleansing, washing from all sin (1 John 1:7, Rev 1:5, Rev 7:14).

~ for the purging of our consciences (Heb 9:14).

~ for peace (Col 1:20).

~ for reconciliation unto Christ (Col 1:20).

~ for righteousness (Rom 3:22, 2 Cor 5:21, Phil 3:9).

~ for the purpose of saving us from the wrath that will come (Rom 5:9).

~ for the destruction of the devil (Heb 2:14).

~ for overcoming the devil (Rev 12:11).

~ for redemption, eternal redemption - for the purchase of our very beings (Eph 1:7, Col 1:14, Heb 9:12, Rev 5:9, Acts 20:28).

~ for the purpose of giving us life within, eternal life (John 6:53, 54).

~for the bringing back to life (Heb 13:20).

~ for sanctification (Heb 10:29, Heb 13:12)

~ for boldness to enter into the Holy of holies, the very presence of God (Heb 10:19).

~ for the purpose of enabling us to make our daily, hourly, minute-by-minute home in Christ Jesus (John 6:56).

The merits of the blood of Jesus are abounding!

"Your blood speaks a better word than all the empty claims I've heard upon this earth..."

~ Matt Redman

What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus;
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Oh! precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

~ Robert Lowry

I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

For several years now, I have kept a 'to-read' book list in my purse. As it began to grow, that list found its way out of my purse onto a word document on my computer. Because buying books is not always an option (don't we all wish we had a $1000 to blow on books?), I often find myself going to my local library to look for all the books I desire to read. Unfortunately, as my love for Christian missionary biographies, church history, and specific Christian authors grew, I soon encountered the limitations of my local library. That's when I found out about interlibrary loans and ever since then, I've been applying for books through that route. It's quite handy!

Gosh, I love books. Who doesn't?
I used to be quite spontaneous in my selection of what books I read in my teenage years. However, as my taste for reading material has matured and grown, I find that I must be very specific and precise about what I read. This focus on specific reading material has become important to me as the Lord has grown me as His disciple. It's not that I will not read fiction, poetry, or classic literature, for I do read those from time to time and I greatly enjoy them. I also believe a good dose of those are healthy for one's education and creative taste. However, I believe my Lord wants me to focus reading books that are historical, Biblically edifying, and point to Jesus Christ. The best kind of book that usually does that is an in-depth, solid missionary biography. Nothing beats opening the pages of a life of one who has walked the narrow road with Christ. It's humbling and it draws me to reflect upon the words of Christ that one must 'deny self,' 'carry their cross,' and follow Him. I believe the reality of the Gospel in one's life and the depth of their love for the Gospel shapes them inside and out. Thus, it will shape how and what a disciple reads. If you click the Amy Carmichael tag at the bottom right of my profile page, you will find a post I made last year on a quote from her about reading and the Christian. She said that 'we are what we read' and I find that to be true again and again. It's about where we are continually placing our minds and hearts and if that place is bringing us into a deeper love for our Lord. Another reason I read specific Christian books on Biblical topics is not only for my personal growth with the Lord, but also for my family, my future husband and family (Lord willing), and my brothers and sisters in the Church. By reading such books on topics related to these various relationships, I can best learn to serve them in practical ways from wise Christian women/men who have gone before me on this same road. Also, I love to purchase books as gifts for those I love and I only buy them books that I know the content of. I think it's important to read the books that you buy for others. And lastly, I just love recommending reading material to others. :-)
The books I'm currently reading and hoping to finish before I leave to Ellerslie: School of Honor
(leaving May 29th with my family to drive all the way up to Windsor, CO! Woohoo!) are: A Sweet & Bitter Providence by John Piper (a study on the book of Ruth), The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (see my previous post on this), and Tramp for the Lord (Corrie Ten Boom's accounts of her life after she lived through the Holocaust).

Anyway, I have pasted my 'to read' list below to share the kinds of books I hope to cover in the next several years (in no particular order). The main topics are Biblical relationships/marriage/courtship/manhood/womanhood/love/Christian missionary biographies/History/Gospel/Evangelism/Spiritual Disciplines/Christian meditations/reflections. It's nice to have this list on my blog so that I can constantly refer back to it when I need to. If any of my readers would like to recommend more titles for me to place on my list, please feel free to share. :-) In the next month, I shall do a blog post with a list of all the books (of the same topics above) that I have read, love, and been inspired/shaped by.

The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God - D.A. Carson
Love in Hard Places - D.A. Carson
Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World – C.J. Mahaney, John Piper

The Scots Worthies - John Howie

The Quest for Meekness and Quietness of Spirit – Matthew Henry
A Church in the House - Matthew Henry
The Art of Divine Contentment - Thomas Watson
Family Driven Faith: Doing What it Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters Who Walk With God - Dr. Voddie Baucham
Family Man, Family Leader - Philip Lancaster
Be Fruitful and Multiply: What the Bible Says About Having Children
- Nancy Campbell
Reforming Marriage - Douglas Wilson
Her Hand in Marriage: Biblical Courtship in the Modern World - Douglas Wilson
Praise Her in the Gates: The Calling of Christian Motherhood – Nancy Wilson
My Life For Yours: A Walk Through the Christian Home - Douglas Wilson
How to Be a Lady - Harvey Newcomb
What He Must Be...If He Wants to Marry My Daughter - Dr. Voddie Baucham
Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World: Finding Intimacy With God in the Busyness of Life – Joanna Weaver
Passionate Housewives Desperate for God – Jennie Chancey, Stacy McDonald
Legacy of Faith: From Women of the Bible to Women of Today – Lydia Brownback
The Christian Lover: The Sweetness of Love and Marriage in the Letters of Believers - Michael A. G. Haykin
When Two Become One - Christopher and Rachel McCluskey
The Excellent Wife – Martha Peace
Biblical Womanhood in the Home – Nancy Leigh DeMoss
Domestic Tranquility: A Brief Against Feminism – F. Carolyn Graglia
Killer Angel: A Short Biography of Planned Parenthood's Founder, Margaret Sanger - Dr. George Grant
Darwin's Plantation: Evolution's Racist Roots - Ken Ham and A. Charles Ware
The Saving Life of Christ – Major W. Ian Thomas
A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life - J.I. Packer
Selections by Amy Carmichael: Toward Jerusalem, I Come Quietly to Meet You: An Intimate Journey in God’s Presence, Mountain Breezes: The Collected Poems of Amy Carmichael, Thou Givest They Gather, Fragments That Remain, Toward Jerusalem, Learning of God, Kohila, His Thoughts Said…His Father Said: Real World Answers to the Hard Questions of Life, Whispers of His Power
Love Has a Price Tag - Elisabeth Elliot
The Music of His Promises - Elisabeth Elliot
The Path of Loneliness - Elisabeth Elliot
Keep a Quiet Heart - Elisabeth Elliot
In Pursuit of God – James L. Snyder
God’s Pursuit of Man – A.W. Tozer
The Purpose of Man: Designed to Worship – A.W. Tozer
The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God: Their Meaning in the Christian Life – A.W. Tozer
Reclaiming Christianity: A Call to Authentic Faith – A.W. Tozer
And He Dwelt Among Us: Teachings from the Gospel of John – A.W. Tozer
The Gospel and Personal Evangelism Becoming a Contagious Christian – Bill Hybels and Mark Mittelberg
Fanny J. Crosby: An Autobiography
Once Blind: The Life of John Newton - Kay Marshall Strom
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life - C.S. Lewis
The Great Divorce - C.S. Lewis
John Calvin: Man of the Millennium - Philip Volmer
Her Heart Can See: The Life and Hymns of Fanny J. Crosby - Edith L. Blumhofer
Eric Liddel: Pure Gold - David McCasland
I Want to Live These Days With You - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Chasing the Dragon: One Woman's Struggle Against the Darkness of Hong Kong's Drug Dens – Jackie Pullinger
Crack In The Wall: Life & Death in Kowloon Walled City – Jackie Pullinger
Hannah Moore: A Biography of Nineteenth Century Missionary and Teacher - Isabel B. Weigold
The Story of the Trapp Family Singers - Maria Augusta Trapp
Henry Martyn: Pioneer Missionary to India and Islam The Truth War – John MacArthur
George Washington's Sacred Fire - Dr. Peter A. Lillback
Reformation and Revival: The Story of the English Puritans - John Brown
Relationships: A Mess Worth Making – Paul Tripp
The Crisis of Caring: Recovering the Meaning of True Fellowship – Jerry Bridges
Rees Howells: Intercessor – Norman P. Grubb
Touching the Invisible – Norman Grubb
Irresistible to God – Steve Gallagher
Dug Down Deep – Joshua Harris
C.T. Studd:Cricketer and Pioneer – Norman Grubb
The Life and Diary of David Brainerd
The Autobiography of George Mueller
Release the Power of Prayer – George Mueller
Answers to Prayer – George Mueller
George Muller: Delighted in God – Steer Roger
Missionary to the New Hebrides – James Paton
The Little Woman – G. Aylward
Classic Christianity: Life’s Too Short to Miss the Real Thing – Bob George
Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life – Donald S. Whitney
The Gospel for Real Life – Jerry Bridges
The Cross of Christ – John Stott
Christian Disciplines - Oswald Chambers

"A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life."Henry Ward Beecher

Finally Alive

Do not marvel that I said to you, "You must be born again." The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sounds, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. ~ John 3:7-8
One of the books that I recently completed on my reading list was John Piper's book on the new birth, Finally Alive. It was such an incredibly humbling read that I feel compelled to devote a blog post to it.
The introduction to Finally Alive begins with the Bible verse above, followed by these words from John Piper:
"The declaration of Jesus that we must be born again is either deluded or devastating to the one would be captain of his soul. Not many Biblical realities are better designed by God to reveal our helplessness in sin."
Unfortunately, as it says on the back of this book, "not everyone today is jealous to esteem this miracle for the wonder that it is."
Piper poses crucial and critical questions about being born again. Questions such as, What is the new birth? How does it come about? What does God do in regeneration? What did He do in history to make it possible? If new birth is decisively the work of God, which it is, how do I experience it? Is there anything I can do to make it happen? What is my part in bringing it about? What is the aim of the new borth? What effect does ithave? What is it like to live as a born again person? What can we do to help others be born again? If God is the great Doer in this affair, what can we do? Does our doing really matter?
Before Piper moves forward to search out Scriptural answers to these questions, he seeks to provide a Biblical definition for the term 'born again.' He targets and clears up the misuses of this term and the many misunderstandings on this subject. 'Born again' is thrown around lightly in evangelical circles. It's merely a title we assign to one who has "prayed the prayer" or made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ and believe they're going to heaven now since they've confessed their sins and accepted Jesus as their Savior. There's also much talk about "re-dedicating" one's life to the Lord. There's also the typical term "backslider" (as if they were a believer before but fell away for awhile?). But the problem with these blacksliders and people who teach such a concept is that they've never even considered the fact that they probably weren't "born again." Piper gives some tough love by stating that Modern Christianity is "permeated by worldliness" and completely unrecognizable from sinners! It's merely an empty, feelings-based faith that has no roots in Truth, thus bearing no lasting, eternal fruit. Popular Christianity is no different from the sinful, hedonistic society that we live. He says,

"Much is at stake in seeing the new birth in true biblical proportions. Heaven and hell are at stake - and a church in the world now that acts more like Jesus and less like the culture around it.
Which brings us back to where we started, namely, the claim that born again Christians have lifestyles of worldliness and sin that are indistinguishable from the unregenerate. I don't think so. 1 John 5:4: "Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world - our faith." But my conviction is not rosy news for the church. It implies that there are millions of church attenders who are not born again.
Nevertheless, in spite of this conviction, I will distance myself from perfectionism. In other words, I don't think that the new borth makes us perfect in this life. Sin remains, and the fight of faith is a daily necessity. Some unbelievers look like better people than some believers. But that is because some pretty bad people have been born again, and the process of transformation is not always as fast as we would like.
It's also because there are unregenerate people who for all kinds of genetic and social reasons conform to an outward morality while being God-indifferent or God-hostile on the inside. God sees the line between the regenerate and the unregenerate perfectly. We don't. But there is such a line, and those who have been born again are being changed, even if slowly, from one degree of humility and love to the next.
This matters. It matters for eternity, and it matters for the glory of Christ in this life."

"God...does not want us to be ignorant of what he does in the new birth. It means that knowing what he has revealed about the new birth is good for us."

In each section of his book, he begins by asking the most basic questions and looks to the primary sources in Scriptures to answer those questions: John 3:1-10, Eph 2:1-10, 1 Peter 1:13-25, 1 Peter 1:22 - 2:3, 2 Cor 4:1-7, Titus 3:1-8, and the entire book of 1 John. He laces through these passages with Jesus' words from the Gospels and from several OT sources. He presses into each verse, gleaning them for all their precious, Christ-exalting truth. For example, in one chapter he gives 11 Evidences of the New Birth:

1. Those who are born of God keep his commandments (1 John 2:3-4, 1 John 3:24).
2. Those who are born of God walk as Christ walked (1 John 2:5-6).
3. Those who are born of God don't hate others but love them (1 John 2:9, 3:14, 4:7-8, 4:20).
4. Those who are born of God don't love the world (1 John 2:15).
5. Those who are born of God confess the Son and receive (have) him (1 John 2:23, 4:15, 5:12).
6. Those who are born of God practice righteousness (1 John 2:29).
7. Those who are born of God don't make a practice of sinning (1 John 3:6, 1 John 3:9-10, 5:18).
8. Those who are born of God possess the Spirit of God (1 John 3:24, 4:13).
9. Those who are born of God listen submissively to the apostolic Word (1 John 4:6).
10. Those who are born of God believe that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 5:1).
11. Those who are born of God overcome the world (1 John 5:4)

It is apparent throughought the book that he does not lightly touch upon this subject. He never presumes to know the intricate, mysterious innerworkings of God and His Holy Spirit. For any pastor, such an area of study is a weighty and humbling task. John Piper seeks to share the grand glory of God revealed in Scripture about this supernatural phenenomon, but he acknowledges that there some details that the Bible does not tell us. Constantly, he points readers to the vast joy, pleasure, and satisfaction in Christ Jesus as one of the most important aims of the new birth - God awakening in us, through the power of His Holy Spirit, spiritual sight and spiritual tastebuds for the preciousness of Jesus alone.

Perhaps the most troubling section of Finally Alive is when Piper address the questions, "Why must we be born again?" The reality and knowledge of ourselves is disturbing. The depth of sin and corruption that makes up the human heart is unfathomable to us. Oftentimes, that reality grows distant and loses its frightening image. We tend to grow cold in our understanding and dealing with sin. The Bible doesn't lightly touch upon the subject of sin. And so, Piper, humbly and lovingly, takes us through verse after verse on our condition, giving deep, convicting, terrible insight to the question, "Why must we be born again?" He states firmly,
"The Bible has a clear and devastating message about the state of our souls." and
"Jesus had no romantic notions about the best of men."

One might ask upon reading those 'disturbing' chapters, "Why do we have to keep emphasizing our sin?" Because it keeps the Cross near in all its beauty and grandeur! The Good News cannot ever be GOOD, wonderful, praise-worthy, joyful news without knowledge of the Bad News. As imperative as the bad news is to hear before one is 'born again,' even moreso after to keep the greatness and gloriousness of the Gospel bright in our eyes! And to keep us from idle, carnal wanderings in our faith! It's humbling and good to hear the Truths that are dark and terrible. It is shameful to preach the Gospel message without preaching about the seriousness of our sin.

Here are the 7 Biblical explanations that Piper gives on our condition apart from the new birth and why it is so necessary:
1. Apart from the new birth, we are dead in trespasses and sin (Eph 2:1-2).
2. Apart from the new bith, we are by nature children of wrath (Eph 2:3).
3. Apart from the new birth, we love darkness and hate the light (John 3:19-20).
4. Apart from the new birth, our hearts are hard like stone (Ezek 36:26; Eph 4:18)
5. Apart from the new birth, we are unable to submit to God or please God (Rom 8:7-8).
6. Apart from the new birth, we are unable to accept the gospel (Eph 4:18; 1 Cor 2:14).
7. Apart from the new birth, we are unable to come to Christ or embrace him as Lord (John 6:44, 65; 1 Cor 12:3)

As the study moves forward and more detailed, Piper builds upon Scripture with Scripture and exhorts us to submit our feelings to the Truth.
"The Biblical truth that saving faith is possibly only because God causes unbelievers to be born again (1 John 5:1) may make us feel empowered and encouraged and bold and hopefuly in our personal evangelism, or it may make us feel fatalistic, pointless, unmotivated, and paralyzed in our evangelism. If we fatalistic and pointless and unmotivated and paralyzed in our witness to unbelievers, our feelings are out of sync with the truth, and we should ask the Lord to change our feelings."
"....seek to bring {our] vagrant feelings into line with ultimate reality. My feelings are not God. God is God. My feelings do not define truth. God's word defines truth. My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives. And sometimes - many times - my feelings are out of sync with truth. When that happens - and it happens every day in some measure - I try not to bend the truth to justify my imperfect feelings, but rather, I plead with God: Purify my perceptions of your truth and transform my feelings so that they are in sync with the truth."

The last chapters of his book are dedicated to sharing the Gospel. I was so strongly encouraged by the practical ways to evangelize that I think I shall type them out soon and share them here on my blog. They were convicting to me as they challenged me to refocus my efforts and reshape my thinking on how I go about my days. John Piper shares the joy and freedom found in being a clay pot that, although we're unable to make the new birth happen in anyone, that proclaims and shares the treasure of Christ and the surpassing power of God in all that we say and do. The fact that we are unable to cause anyone to be born again gives more hope to our powerful God who may choose to use us anytime or anywhere to stir others to His glorious reality.

My heart was overcome with the glory of the Gospel in Piper's last words:

"Jesus' words "You must be born again" (John 3:7) go to the heart of the world's problems. There will be no final peace, no final justice, no triumph over hate and selfishness and racism without this profound change in human nature.
All other diagnoses and remedies are superficial. They may eve be valuable - like laws that restrain people from doing their worst. But without the new birth, people are not changed at the root, and that is where the problem lies. If human beings are not changed at the root, then our innate selfishness will spoil every dream.
Jesus' remedy fits the depths of our disorder. If we only did bad things because of bad circumstances, then ther emight be hope that changing the circumstances would change our behavior. But our problem is not simply that we do bad things - like slanderings others, and cheating in privated, and neglecting our responsibilities, and shunning those who are different, and doing shoddy work, and bending the truth, and gratifying our desires ant others' expense, and ignoring the poor, and giving no regard to our Maker.
Our problem is that what we do comes from who we are (Matt 7:16-17, 12:34).
So if your heartache is for your own personal changed, or for change in your marriage, or change in your prodigal children, or in your church, or in the systemic structures of injustice, or in the political system, or in the hostilities among nations, or in the human degradation of the environment, or in the raunchiness of our entertainment culture, or in the miseries of the poor, or in the calllous opulence of the rich, or in the inequities of educational opportunity, or in arrogant attitudes of ethnocentrism, or in a hundred areas of human need caused by some form of human greed - if your heart aches for any of these, then you should care supremely about the new birth.
There are other ways of shaping culture and guiding behavior. But none so deep. None so far-reaching. None so universally relevant. None so eternally significant."

Oh that God might grant us sight to always see this eternal, divine truth as precious!!

I once thought there was need to move beyond the basic Gospel message. In one sense I was right, and in another sense, I was wrong. I was right in the sense that we need to move beyond - not away from the Gospel, but into the Gospel. There is a vast depth of meaning, grace, and glory in the Gospel left unexplored. You can hear all the lovely, happy bits of the Gospel message whilst walking through a Christian bookstore or attending church every sunday. But you'll never know the depth and granduer of it merely by doing or being a part of the "Christian" things. Healing, power, holy affections for Christ and the Cross, and vibrant life come only from daily beholding the Gospel and God's glory in all its detail! There is great need to daily abide and meditate in this Truth. There are vast treasures in this Truth that we have yet tasted.

This might concern some, but in reading Finally Alive in line with the Bible, I have been even more strongly rooted in my belief of God's sovereignty, His effectual calling (predestination), and man's complete inability to will or to choose God. One might think, "Oh gosh, she's just been reaffirmed in her Calvinism." If, by Calvinism, you mean that God, lovingly, chose before creation a Bride for Himself (the souls of whom He knows all by name!) and overcomes our hardened, depraved hearts, and wills to bring us to Himself, thereby granting (in his mysterious, sovereign goodness!) some vessels for mercy and some for wrath - then yes, I have been 'reaffirmed' in that belief. However, I highly disapprove of its labeling as Calvinism - as if Calvin himself came up with such a hated belief that tears free-will straight out of our hands! Our very nature shivers at such a reality. Do we really believe that the teaching of predestination and God's soverign choice is merely the result of one man's interpretation of Scripture? No one ever curses or hates the Apostle Paul for some of the things he wrote about this in Romans. No, we just avoid it and pretend it's not there.
Test everything with Scripture. Answer Scripture with Scripture. Lace them together. This is not something we cannot know.
I cannot run from these hard truths. The more earnestly I've tried to find anything in Scripture that might suggest otherwise, the increasingly more apparent it becomes that God will give His glory to NO ONE. He does it all - every little and hard thing, even those that our finite minds cannot comprehend. There is much freedom in His sovereign grace - freedom that, otherwise, would not have been there if our little wills marred His Spirit's divine innerworkings. It frees us up to trust in Him - Rom 8:28 - knowing that He works for our good and His glory, which is our joy.

Lord, I thank You that the new birth and the entire Gospel is entirely Your work because otherwise, I would never have chosen You and known Your Life! What sweet, precious, comforting, freeing joy this is to our souls!

The Full Glory of Love

Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken
- Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

Many are well-acquainted with these words. They fall over us in a splendid sigh that is filled with hopes for such a love to prove so true. Love: The great marvel of souls. It is either zealously sought after or vehemently rejected. Either way, all souls have, in some way, been affected and touched by the idea, desire, or feeling of Love. Time after time, we think we have grasped it. We convince ourselves that we finally know it, that we truly understand it. It is so beautiful that we believe that it can transcend all time. To the romantic, Love is the ultimate God - self-sufficient and eternal. And then somewhere along the ecstasy of such a journey, it dies. It always dies. Even for those whom it has proven true, through many years or many trials, there comes a moment when it ceases to be.

Recall the scene in the film, Sense & Sensibility, when Marianne staggers over the hill facing Allenham (the estate of her lover and betrayer, Sir Willoughby) and recites Sonnet 116 in remembrance of what she and Willoughby once shared in "true Love." The tears streaming from her eyes are mingled with the icy rain falling around her. She stands there, unfeeling of the harsh elements that she finds herself in. In the love that she knew, there only awaited death. To her, there was nothing of value, worth, or meaning outside of that love. She was ready to die for it; to die a death that simply amounted to nothing. Instead of becoming a conqueror through love, she became conquered by love.
So it is with many of us. Never are we victorious. We are merely victims of that which we faithfully follow and call love. And like fools being led to the slaughter, we would rather meet that same piercing defeat again and again than ever dare to consider that maybe that "Love" is not truly Love. That, perhaps, our understanding, vision, and ideas of love are distorted, artificial, and empty. That true Love is not meant for base fools such as ourselves, who fondle cheap trifles and fanciful ideals that fall short of eternal worth.
And then our gaze is drawn ever upward, held captive, and fixed upon one whom we despise to think of as the fulfillment of the purest, truest Love.

Calvary, the word pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.
It is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. It searches our love for our beloved. It discovers the quality of that love.
An Indian refiner puts his glistening gold into a small earthen crucible.
He blows up the fire, the grey scum floats to the surface of the gold.
The grey scum of selfishness in our human love will float to the surface of our soul and be discovered by us, if we are willing to allow the Refiner to blow up His fire.
There is a rooted possessiveness about much of human affection. “My loved one for myself” - that is the underlying thought of much that looks so beautiful.
God’s thought was different.
The love that our Lord asks for us is different.
His Father’s love was a giving love.
- Amy Carmichael

On the evening of His betrayal He did not desire for us the less costly lover, the natural love which shrinks from a hard way for a beloved one, and never contemplates anything approaching shame.
Human love with its loopholes of escape from the supreme demand was not in His mind, It was Divine love that He desired should be in us, the love wherewith He Himself was loved, Divine love with all its agonizing possibilities - but with great certainty of eternal joy.
We have lowered the standard. That which should be usual has become so unusual that we are surprised and stirred, and write books about these bright particular stars in our firmament who have shone mightily in loving. Such lives should be the rule, the others the exception. Have we in our refusal of the Crucifix refused also the Cross? We do refuse the Crucifix. The sign of our faith, as Westcott said long ago, is an empty Cross, an empty tomb; He is not here, He is risen. But it is strangely possible to decorate that empty Cross, to smother it in flowers, even (but surely this borders on blasphemy) to use the symbol as an ornament. And yet the great law stands: “Whosoever doth not bear his Cross, and come after Me, cannot be disciple.”
We who follow the Crucified are not here to make a pleasant thing of life; we are called to suffering for the sake of a suffering, sinful world. The Lord forgive us our shameful evasions and hesitations.
His brow was crowned with thorns; do we seek rose-buds for our crowning?
His hands were pierced with nails; are our hands ringed with jewels?
His feet were bare and bound; do our feet walk delicately?
What do we know of travail? Of tears that scald before we fall? of heart-break?
Of being scorned?
God forgive us our love of ease.
God forgive us that so often we turn our faces from a life that is even remotely like His.
Forgive us that we all but worship comfort, the delight of the presence of loved ones, possessions, treasure on earth.
Far, far from our prayers too often is any thought of prayer for a love which will lead us to give one whom we love to follow our Lord to Gethsemane, to Calvary - perhaps because we have never been there ourselves.
Lord, we kneel beside Thee now, with hands folded between Thy hands as a child’s are folded in its mother’s. We would follow the words of Thy prayer, dimly understanding their meaning, but wanting to understand….
"That the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:26)
- Amy Carmichael

The natural loves are not self-sufficient. Something else, at first vaguely described as "decency and common sense," but later revealed as goodness, and finally as the whole Christian life in one particular relation, must come to the help of the mere feeling if the feeling is to be kept sweet.
To say this is not to belittle the natural loves but to indicate where their real glory lies. It is no disparagement to a garden to say that it will not fence and weed itself, nor prune its own fruit trees, nor roll and cuts its owns lawns. A garden is a good thing but that is not the sort of goodness it has. It will remain a garden, as distinct from a wilderness, only if someone does all these things to it. Its real glory is of quite a different kind. The very fact that it needs constant weeding and pruning bears witness to that glory. It teems with life. It glows with colour and smells like heaven and puts forward at every hour of a summer day beauties which man could never have created and could not even, on his own resources, have imagined. If you want to see the difference between its contribution and the gardener's, put the commonest weed it grows side by side with his hoes, rakes, shears, and packet of weed killer; you have put beauty, energy and fecundity beside dead, sterile things. Just so, our "decency and common sense" show grey and deathlike beside the geniality of love. And when the garden is in its full glory the gardener's contributions to that glory will still have been in a sense paltry compared with those of nature. Without life springing from the earth, without rain, light and heat descending from the sky, he could do nothing. When he has done all, he has merely encouraged here and discouraged there, powers and beauties that have a different source. But his share, though small, is indispensable and laborious. When God planted a garden He set man over it and set the man under Himself. When He planted the garden of our nature and caused the flowering, fruiting loves to grow there, He set our will to "dress" them. Compared with them it is dry and cold. And unless His grace comes down, like the rain and the sunshine, we shall use this tool to little purpose. But its laborious - and largely negative - services are indispensable. If they were needed when the garden was still Paradisal, how much more now when the soil has gone sour and the worst weeds seem to thrive on it best? But heaven forbid we should work in the spirit of prigs and Stoics. While we hack and prune we know very well that what we are hacking and pruning is big with a splendour and vitality which our rational will could never of itself have supplied. To liberate that splendour, to let it become fully what it is trying to be, to have tall trees instead of scrubby tangles, and sweet apples instead of crabs, is part of our purpose.

The loves prove that they are unworthy to take the place of God by the fact that they cannot even remain themselves and do what they promise to do without God's help....Even for their own sakes the loves must submit to be second things if they are to remain the things they want to be. In this yoke lies their true freedom; they "are taller when they bow." For when God rules in a human heart, though He may sometimes have to remove certain of its native authorities altogether, He often continues others in their offices and, by subjecting their authority to His, gives it for the first time a firm basis.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
Christ did not teach and suffer that we might become, even in the natural loves, more careful of our own happiness. If a man is not uncalculating towards the earthly beloveds whom he has seen, he is none the more likely to be so towards God whom he has not. We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it.

We are all receiving Charity. There is something in each of us that cannot be naturally loved. It is no one's fault if they do not so love it. Only the lovable can be naturally loved. You might as well ask people to like the taste of rotten bread or the sound of a mechanical drill. We can be forgiven, and pitied, and loved in spite of it, with Charity; no other way. All who have good parents, wives, husbands, or children, may be sure that at some times - and perhaps at all times in respect of some one particular trait or habit - they are receiving Charity, are loved not because they are lovable but because Love Himself is in those who love them.
Thus God, admitted to the human heart, transforms not only Gift-Love but Need-Love; not only our Need-love of Him, but our Need-love of one another. This is of course not the only thing that can happen. He may come on what seems to us a more dreadful mission and demand that a natural love be totally renounced. A high and terrible vocation, like Abraham's, may constrain a man to turn his back on his own people and his father's house. Eros, directed to a forbidden object, may have to be sacrifice. In such instances, the process, though hard to endure, is easy to understand. What we are more likely to overlook is the necessity for a transformation even when the natural love is allowed to continue.
In such a case the Divine Love does not substitute itself for the natural - as if we had to throw away our silver to make room for the gold. The natural loves are summoned to become modes of Charity while also remaining the natural loves they were.
One sees here at once a sort of echo rhyme or corollary to the Incarnation itself. And this need not surprise us, for the Author of both is the same. As Christ is Perfect God and perfect Man, the natural loves are called to become Charity and also perfect natural loves. As God becomes Man "Not by conversion of the Godhead into the flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God." so here; Charity does not dwindle into merely natural love but natural love is taken up into, made the tuned and obedient instrument of, Love Himself.”

And yet, I believe, the necessity for the conversion is inexorable; at least, if our natural loves are to enter the heavenly life. That they can enter it most of us in fact believe. We may hope that the resurrection of the body means also the resurrection of what may be called our “greater body”; the general fabric of our earthly life with its affections and relationships. But only on a condition; not a condition arbitrarily laid down by God, but one necessarily inherent in the character of Heaven: nothing can enter there which cannot become heavenly. “Flesh and blood,” mere nature, cannot inherit that Kingdom. Man can ascend to Heaven only because the Christ, who died and ascended to Heaven, is “formed in him.” Must we not suppose that the same is true of a man’s loves? Only those into which Love Himself has entered will ascend to Love Himself. And these can be raised with Him only if they have, in some degree and fashion, shared His death; if the natural element in them has submitted – year after year, or in some sudden agony – to transmutation. The fashioned of this world passes away. The very name of nature implies the transitory. Natural loves can hope for eternity only in so far as they have allowed themselves to be taken into the eternity of Charity; have at least allowed the process to begin here on earth, before the night comes when no man can work. And the process will always involve a kind of death. There is no escape. In my love for wife or friend the only eternal element is the transforming presence of Love Himself. By that presence, if at all, the other elements may hope, as our physical bodies hope, to be raised from the dead. For this only is holy in them, this only is the Lord.
- C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Dearest Lord, transform our feeble hearts. Transform these lowly, natural loves.
That which you have justified, Lord, glorify!
Purify these loves and make them victorious through Thy Divine Love!
May our loves on earth be seated beneath Thee, reflections of Thy Glory!
Through Him, who loved us, we are more than conquerors in all things.

Reading Ecclesiastes With the Gospel in Mind

Here is an excerpt from a commentary on Ecclesiastes by Temper Longman which I find to be crucial for one's mindset when going in to study this weighty book. Keep in mind that the author of Ecclesiastes is being referred to as Qohelet because his title is a translation of the Hebrew word qohelet which literally means "one who assembles" or "assembler."

"The book of Ecclesiastes must in the final analysis be understood by the modern reader in the light of the full context of the canon. For the Christian that context includes the NT."
"Ecclesiastes is never quoted in the NT, but there is an allusion to the message of the book in Romans 8:18-21:
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

The world translated “frustration” (mataiotes) is the word used in the Septuagint to translate the motto word of Ecclesiastes, “meaningless” (hebel). While Qohelet sounds nonorthodox in the light of the rest of the canon, he presents a true assessment of the world apart from the light of God’s redeeming love. His perspective on the world and life is restricted; he describes it as life “under the sun” that is, apart from heavenly realities, apart from God. In other words, his hopelessness is the result of the curse of the fall without recourse to God’s redemption.
Qohelet sounds modern because he so vividly captures the despair of a world without God. The difference, though, is that the modern world believes that God does not exist; Qohelet believed that God existed but questioned his love and concern (4:16-5:7). As a result, nothing had meaning for Qohelet, not wealth, wisdom, charity. After all, death brought everything to an end. Qohelet is preoccupied with death throughout the book (2:12-16; 3:18-22; 12:1-7) because he sees nothing beyond that point.
On one level, therefore, Qohelet is exactly right. The world (“under the sun”) without God is meaningless. Death ends it all, so he alternated between “hating life” (2:17) and taking what meager enjoyment God hands out (2:24-26).
As we have seen above, the message of the book is found in the simple instruction in the last few verses, not in Qohelet’s speech. Nonetheless, we may still admit that Qohelet has rightly described the horror of a world under curse and apart from God. What he did not have was hope.
As we turn to the NT, we see that Jesus Christ is the one who redeems us from vanity, the meaninglessness under which Qohelet suffered. Jesus redeemed us from Qohelet’s meaningless world by subjecting himself to it. Jesus is the son of God, but nonetheless, he experienced the vanity of the world so he could free us from it. As he hung on the cross, his own father deserted him (Matt 27: 45-46). At this point, he experienced the frustration of the world under curse in a way that Qohelet could not even imagine. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Gal 3:13).
As a result, Christians can experience deep significance precisely in those areas where Qohelet felt most oppressed. Jesus has restored meaning to wisdom, labor, love, and life. After all, facing death, Jesus conquered the biggest fear facing Qohelet. He showed that for believers death is not the end of all meaning, but the entrance into the very presence of God."

- The Book of Ecclesiastes by Tremper Longman

Don't EVER let go of the Gospel when reading a book like Ecclesiastes. Without the Gospel, this book shouldn't even be studied or analyzed. It is very possible to formulate errors in your study and understanding of this book, your worldview, etc unless you are firmly committed to a canonical-Christocentric approach. May He renew our minds whenever we read this book, giving us a passion and a vision for His glory in such a serious and heavy book.